In this article we are going to introduce ASO for beginners, why ASO is important, the main topics and key considerations for an optimized mobile app.

Why ASO is important

App store search continues to be the largest channel for mobile app discovery and mobile app installs.

Despite Super Bowl spots, promotions in your Facebook feed or ads in other apps, mobile users respond that app store search is the channel used most often to find new apps.

Without an optimized app listing, you risk losing out on users searching for your app simply because they don’t see it.

How Apple and Google index apps

Both Google Play and Apple keep their indexing and search ranking algorithms private. By studying cause and effect, correlations and mining our own app store intelligence data – prominent indexing and ranking factors become clear.

Let’s start with Apple and their app store

An app listing in Apple’s App Store contains public elements like the icon, name, description and screenshots. Unique to Apple is a 100 character, “hidden” or private field for keywords – used to help Apple better understand what your app is, who it is for etc..

Apple uses the app’s name and keywords to determine which keywords and phrases are relevant to the app.

For example – consider the following fictional app:

App name: Hotel Finder – best hotels at the best rates

Keywords: deals,travel,motel,room

This app would likely be in the search results for “Hotel room deals”.

Notice a few things about how this works:

the example search used keywords found in both the app name and keywords field

While keywords used in the app name are weighted more heavily than those used in the “keywords” field, the combination of keywords used across these elements creates a sort of keyword matrix.

the formatting of the keywords field is keywords separated by commas and no spaces

How to create an app listing

With the limited space allotted to the app listing elements, keywords and phrases must be:

relevant to your target audience

relevant to your app

used by your audience when searching the app stores

work together to create broad coverage of a specific target

In a sentence: because space is limited, we need to identify keywords and phrases that our target audience uses to find apps like ours, that provides coverage of all ultra-relevant searches.

With limited space in Apple’s keywords field, using precious characters for “free, fun, fast, social, new” etc… unless these modifiers support a more specific, ultra-relevant phrase just doesn’t make sense.

Instead, focus on the features of your app that are either essential, differentiating or both.

Things to avoid in ASO

When evaluating the potential of organic app store user acquisition, it is clear an optimized app is an extremely valuable asset.

The “shortcuts” to building this asset have mostly been shut down, but here are some common “gotchas” for ASO beginners:

Keyword Stuffing – creating an app name that makes no sense but uses every possible keyword in its name.

Apple provides 255 characters for the app name, but rarely approves those longer than 100 characters, and staying under 60 is even a safer bet.

Plus – who wants to download an app like “Cowboy Command – the fast, free, amazing, fun, cowboys and indians, horses, wild west, shootout, first person shooter, where you invite Facebook friends and create a clan to crush the competition“.

Using web data instead of app store data – not a hack or against the rules, just user intent is so different, keywords used in web search do not mirror or even proxy those used in app store search. Just do a search on Google then in Google Play and note the differences in results.

Feeling good about your crash course in ASO for Beginners? Why don’t you check out our whitepaper on ASO, or take a look at our app store specific guides – for Apple and Google Play.

Apple and Google both use app store reviews and app store ratings in their app store search ranking algorithms.

App store optimization as a practice and strategy is evolving as are the app store ranking algorithms that help to shape ASO.

Because the app store rankings algorithms are not shared publically, and differ between Apple and Google, it is not possible to provide a specific weight of the quality, volume, or momentum of app ratings and reviews on search rankings.

While it does not appear there is a minimum number of ratings for top rankings in either Apple’s App Store or Google Play, it is generally accepted and understood that:

more ratings (and reviews) are better than fewer, and

higher ratings are better than lower

It follows then that any complete app store optimization strategy requires looking beyond the app listing and to not only building an app users love, but one that they are willing to rate and post reviews for.

Even with a somewhat cumbersome process, the best way to acquire lots of positive ratings and reviews is to build a great app that connects and resonates with its intended audience.

An amazing app is not enough.

Let’s review the actual process of rating and reviewing apps from the user’s perspective.

The process is a bit broken

Users can rate and review apps from their mobile devices in the app store app, or via the web if they are logged in.

The part that is a bit broken is that asking for a rating and review requires a user to stop using your app, leave your app, open a new app (the app store app) and navigate to the review section or tab.

While this is not ideal – there is another fairly common issue of irrelevant ratings.

Every marketplace from Amazon to Yelp suffers from their own issues with user reviews – so how do we make the most of the opportunity to hear from our users and influence new app installs and search rankings?

Let’s see if we can’t help our users a bit, by making it easier to leave our apps a relevant review.

Request app ratings

There are a few approaches to encouraging users rate your app that range from passive to downright annoying and disruptive to the user experience.

Add a link to your app listing in the app store in the menu

The least obtrusive to the user experience, adding a link in your app’s menu or settings directly to your app’s listing in the app store accomplishes two things:

reminds the user to rate or review

saves them the step of navigating to the app store and then your app

Not very proactive, but helpful. A more proactive approach would be actually asking for ratings and reviews.

Set an automated request after X days and X uses

A few years ago, a popular approach for requesting mobile app reviews was to simply schedule a popup that asked for a rating and review.

The publisher could set the popup to open on the 3rd app open (for example), or after 10 days or both.

This approach is flawed for several reasons:

a user just opened your app – even if for the 10th time, why divert them away from using your app?

while app opens are a good indicator of engagement, there are better times to request a rating and review

Ask for a rating and review during a high point

A better time to request a rating or review is when a user is at a high point in your app.

Maybe they passed a level, unlocked some content or otherwise just had a good experience in your app.

The ideal process

The ideal way for many apps to best support their users and create a funnel for acquiring ratings and reviews is checking in periodically on the user’s experience.

If there is an issue > funnel to support.

If the user is happy with the app > ask for a review.

This has been the approach adopted by many of the mobile app review and user management services.

Small changes to the color of an icon can have a big impact on conversions (from app listing views to installs), but focus groups allow you to test big differences – with one design direction failing to resonate while another shows great promise.

Mobile app publishers and designers can get an idea of what resonates with their audience by looking at competing apps, but outside of that guidance, there is no way to really know what will drive your target audience to install your app without asking them.

2 – feedback is quantitative and qualitative

As with most A/B testing platforms and in Google Play experiments, you will be able to see which design, description, screenshot order, icon etc.. converted best and whether the results were statistically significant, but you won’t know why.

Focus groups provide an opportunity to experiment boldly and then garner qualitative feedback from the test subjects.

Why did they pick icon design #2 over 1, 3 and 4? Why was the app name confusing or misleading? Which screenshots best explained the most important features of the app to them and why?

While focus groups are unique in the quality of potential feedback, running ads to a poll, or polling your existing lists (email or social media) are two other ways to test listing elements prior to publishing.

Ratings and Review SDK

Ratings and reviews have an impact on app store rankings in both Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

Even bad ratings seem to be better than no ratings – which appears to be some broken measure of engagement.

While there does not appear to be some magical minimum number of ratings required for top rankings, more ratings is generally accepted as better for app store positioning.

Rating apps is not easy for users. It takes multiple taps and leaving the app to rate or review an app – a tall order even if you (the user) love the app.

Because the best indicator of user satisfaction tends to be retention, engagement or lifetime value (or some mix of the 3), if it were not for the impact on rankings, many app publishers would not prioritize app store review prompts.

But alas, while ratings matter, publishers are encouraged to find ways to request ratings with the least impact on the user experience.

Publishers can set up ratings and review prompts with a custom implementation or use a proven model for customer support and ratings acquisition by partnering with services like that offered by Apptentive.

While ratings and reviews are important for app store rankings and app optimization, prompting for reviews should always account for the impact on the user experience to ensure you are not chasing ratings at the expense of revenue.

Review Mining

Similar to the above, review mining is actually a tool for competitive research.

What features or functions are your competitors’ app users complaining about, requesting or commenting on that your app does better?

Review mining helps guide app listing strategies from which keywords and phrases to target to which features to highlight in screenshots.

Consider a top ranked photo app that allows for adding text to user photos. The reviews complain that posting to Tumblr does not work well or at all. Your photo app works great with Tumblr.

You may have thought this was your 12th most exciting feature, but it could well be your app’s top differentiating feature and worth prioritizing in the app listing.

App Store Data / Intelligence

As the saying goes, “where there is mystery – there is margin” and there is a ton of mystery in the app stores.

App store data and intelligence services span topics from monetization models and estimated lifetime values of competitive apps, to which SDKs apps are using to estimates on what specific apps are paying for new users by geo.

It is hard to say how accurate many of these tools are, but many services are popping up to carve out a niche and provide just a little more insight to help their clients improve their results in the app stores.

When it comes to tools specifically for app store optimization, features publishers should look for include:

mobile app store search terms – data on the keywords and phrases the market is using when searching the mobile app stores.

evaluation of how the app name and keywords or description fields work together for broad coverage of relevant search terms (the “keyword matrix”).

suggested keyword and phrase targets by category, trending, current traction and competition.

In previous posts, we have explained why app store data and web data are very different. It may not be obvious but several app store optimization tools use the free Google keyword planner built using web search as a proxy for app store search volume and related phrases.

If you would like to see how Gummicube approaches ASO and the proprietary tools we have built for optimizing app listing for organic app store search, you can request a demo here.

Positioning mobile apps in the app stores globally for discovery and installs from the massive organic app store search traffic volumes is one of the best long-term strategies for success in the app stores.

Creating an app store listing, testing and regularly adjusting to changing market demands is called app store optimization or ASO. In the below whitepaper, we will introduce:

the opportunity in the app stores

the business case for investing in ASO

how Apple and Google index mobile apps in their app stores

data on how users are searching from their mobile devices

and finally discuss the various elements of an app listing and the impact each has on visibility, rankings and conversion in the app stores

Highest ROI Activity

As the costs of acquiring mobile app users from paid install campaigns increases, a complete ASO implementation becomes more valuable. On page 4, we present why ASO provides a long-term competitive advantage and will likely drive the best investments returns (ROI) of any app marketing effort.

How Apple and Google Index Apps

Apple and Google index mobile apps differently, and the entire field of app search, indexing, and rankings is dynamic and fluid. But there are some established principles and best practices for giving Apple and Google exactly what they want so they can index your app correctly. How the app stores index apps and the best practices for each element and overall are explained in detail.

How Users Search for Apps

Discover how your target market searches the app stores, and how it differs from web search. We break down a few examples and analyze how the motivations and intent of users searching the app store is very different from user intent when “Googling” something.

Breaking Down the App Listing Elements

Best practices, strategies, restrictions and things to avoid when drafting your app’s name or title, selecting keywords and phrases to target in the keywords field and description, and much more.

Features First

Features and brands are how users search the app stores. With your market research using an app store intelligence platform, you know which features of your mobile app are most important or differentiating.

When focusing on your app’s features, make sure the first two clearly show what your app is for and what it does.

Visiting the Periscope listing again – they have obviously decided to position the app in two ways:

explore the world (for those consuming videos on Periscope)

broadcast live from anywhere (for those making videos)

Even if you had never heard of Periscope and you saw the listing in results from a search for “live video” or some other related search, the first two screenshots tell two different types of potential users exactly what the app is and does.

Screenshots 3, 4 and 5 go into additional features including discovery and the social features, but screenshots 1 and 2 show off Periscope’s most unique, important and differentiating features.

Focus Group Tested

Identifying your app’s most important features is one thing, designing screenshots that are understandable and encourage action is quite another.

From the graphics used to the call to action or copy, and of course even color and font choices impact how potential users react to your screenshot design.

2) qualitative and quantitative feedback. Most A/B testing on live traffic is data driven

“Screenshot Design A” converted at a 15% higher rate than “Screenshot Design B” so let’s go with “A”. With focus groups, we can get written feedback as to why a user liked one design over another, what was confusing, what they liked etc…

Increasing conversions in app store views from 25% to 30% (a 20% increase) can mean thousands of new users each month.

Order Testing

Maybe your app has 2 or 3 features that really set it apart, and you are not sure which to lead with?

As we have discovered, the first 2 screenshots are visible in search results – so experimenting with order can have a real impact on conversion rates.